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WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court agreed Friday to join the debate over consumers' privacy rights in a case that will decide how the government can be punished for revealing Social Security numbers and other personal information.
Justices have repeatedly wrangled over government record privacy involving such things as students grading each other's papers and colleges divulging information about students.
The appeal by a coal miner whose Social Security number was made public will be heard in the court's next term, along with another case that asks when the government must release sensitive or gruesome law enforcement records. That case involves a dispute over photographs from the investigation of White House attorney Vincent Foster's suicide in 1993.
The Social Security number case strikes a nerve because of growing problems with high-tech identity theft.
Also Friday, the court rejected an appeal from antiabortion protesters facing a multimillion dollar judgment for targeting clinic doctors with "wanted" posters. The court had been asked to give free-speech protection to the activists, but the Bush administration discouraged justices from taking the case.
The matters were among those handled by justices on the last business day before a summer break. After months of speculation about a possible retirement, the court left without such an announcement.